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3 months 4 weeks ago
We have been aware of the need for these institutional strategies at least since 1935 — but of course before, but I’m choosing 1935 because that was the year when W.E.B. Du Bois published his germinal Black Reconstruction in America. And the question was not what should individual Black people do, but rather how to reorganize and restructure post-slavery society in order to guarantee the incorporation of those who had been formerly enslaved. The society could not remain the same — or should not have remained the same. Neoliberalism resists change at the individual level. It asks the individual to adapt to conditions of capitalism, to conditions of racism.
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3 months 4 weeks ago
It may indeed be doubted, whether butcher's meat is any where a necessary of life. Grain and other vegetables, with the help of milk, cheese, and butter, or oil, where butter is not to be had, it is known from experience, can, without any butcher's meat, afford the most plentiful, the most wholesome, the most nourishing, and the most invigorating diet.
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Chapter II, Part II, Appendix to Articles I and II.
3 months 4 weeks ago
It goes without saying that any persons may attempt to unite kindred spirits, but, whatever their hopes and longings, none have the right to impose their vision of unity upon the rest.
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Ch. 10 : A Framework for Utopia; The Framework as Utopian Common Ground, p. 325
3 months 4 weeks ago
Armies are necessary, before all things, for the defense of governments from their own oppressed and enslaved subjects.
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Chapter VII, Significance of Compulsory Service
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I shall call Ideological State Apparatuses (ISAs) a certain number of realities which present themselves to the immediate observer in the form of distinct and specialized institutions: ...
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3 months 4 weeks ago
For there's no rood has not a star above it; The cordial quality of pear or plum Ascends as gladly in a single tree, As in broad orchards resonant with bees; And every atom poises for itself, And for the whole.
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Musketaquid, st. 5
3 months 4 weeks ago
The metaphysical apologia at least betrayed the injustice of the established order through the incongruence of concept and reality. The impartiality of scientific language deprived what was powerless of the strength to make itself heard and merely provided the existing order with a neutral sign for itself. Such neutrality is more metaphysical than metaphysics.
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E. Jephcott, trans., p. 17
3 months 4 weeks ago
The most natural Beauty in the World is Honesty, and Moral Truth. For all Beauty is Truth. True Features make the Beauty of a Face; and true Proportions the Beauty of Architecture; as true Measures that of Harmony and Musick.
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Vol. 1, p. 77; "Sensus Communis".
3 months 4 weeks ago
The state as the decisive political entity possesses an enormous power: the possibility of waging war and thereby publicly disposing of the lives of men. The jus belli contains such a disposition. It implies a double possibility: the right to demand from its own members the readiness to die and unhesitatingly to kill enemies.
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3 months 4 weeks ago
Smith argued in 1776 that the division of labor was the basis for the separation between mental and manual labor, and therefore between natural philosopher and laborer.
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Myles W. Jackson, Spectrum of Belief: Joseph Von Fraunhofer and the Craft of Precision Optics (2000)
3 months 4 weeks ago
Having acknowledged the measure of the good to be pleasure, i.e., beauty, the European upper classes went back in their comprehension of art to the gross conception of the primitive Greeks which Plato had already condemned. And with this understanding of life, a theory of art was formulated.
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3 months 4 weeks ago
The science of mine and thine—the science of justice—is the science of all human rights; of all a man’s rights of person and property; of all his rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
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Section I, p. 5
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Keep cool: it will be all one a hundred years hence.
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Montaigne; or, The Skeptic
3 months 4 weeks ago
Love prudence.
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3 months 4 weeks ago
The Roman came into the Promised Land that had become less and less as promised. The rich got along quite well with the foreign occupation; it provided protection from desperate peasants and patriotic resistance fighters. It provided protection from prophets who could be labeled "agitators" now, without any qualms.
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p. 121
3 months 4 weeks ago
Smith "wrote that the ultimate goal of business is not to make a profit. Profit is just the means. The goal is general welfare."
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Walter Wink (1992) Engaging the powers: Discernment and resistance in a world of domination., Vol. 3. HSRC Press, p. 68.
3 months 4 weeks ago
Amid this life based on coercion, one and the same thought constantly emerged among different nations, namely, that in every individual a spiritual element is manifested that gives life to all that exists, and that this spiritual element strives to unite with everything of a like nature to itself, and attains this aim through love.
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II
3 months 4 weeks ago
For it is said, "You shall strengthen the stranger and the dweller in your midst and live with him," that is to say, strengthen him until he needs no longer fall upon the mercy of the community or be in need.
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Book 7 (Sefer Zera'im "Seeds"), Treatise 2 (Mattenot Aniyiim "Laws of obligatory gifts to the poor"), Chapter (Perek) 10, Halacha 7 (Translated by Jonathan J. Baker.) | Variant: Concerning this [Leviticus 25:35] states: "You shall support him, the strange
3 months 4 weeks ago
Solitude, the safeguard of mediocrity, is to genius the stern friend.
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Culture
3 months 4 weeks ago
Life is the spirit incarnate in time.
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3 months 4 weeks ago
The art of writing books is not yet invented. But it is at the point of being invented. Fragments of this nature are literary seeds. There may be many an infertile grain among them: nevertheless, if only some come up!
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Fragment No. 114
3 months 4 weeks ago
Dear youths, I warn you cherish peace divine, And in your hearts lay deep these words of mine.
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As reported by Heraclides, son of Sarapion, and Diogenes Laërtius, in Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers, "Pythagoras", Sect. 7, in the translation of C. D. Yonge (1853)
3 months 4 weeks ago
You sacrifice yourself, your wealth torments you,You give away yourself,You don't take care of yourself, you don't love yourself;Great agony always compels you,The agony of an overflowing barn, an overabundant heart;But no one thanks you any longer ...
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3 months 4 weeks ago
It is often better for a person to recognize a sin than to do a good deed. Recognizing a sin makes a person humble. Doing a good deed often can feed a person's pride.
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p. 108
3 months 4 weeks ago
The generation of Isaiah did not require the detailed description; his account, "I saw the Lord," &c., sufficed. The generation of the Babylonian exile wanted to learn all the details. ...Isaiah was so familiar with it that he did not consider it necessary to communicate it to others as a new thing, especially as it was well known to the intelligent.
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Ch.6
3 months 4 weeks ago
God said, I am tired of kings, I suffer them no more; Up to my ear the morning brings The outrage of the poor.
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Boston Hymn, st. 2
3 months 4 weeks ago
The housing scenario we were working on clearly showed the inadequacy of our present system. At the present rate, the use of metals in housing would prove to be totally insufficient. Engendered materials such as plastics will have to be developed if we are to solve mankind’s housing needs. The housing scenario encompassed more than just the shelter needs of the world. As it evolved we saw that it would encompass communications and mobility... As a total service facility, the housing needs would encompass not only shelter but communications-with its own resultant education, medical information and attention, personal telephone contact with anyone, anywhere, and mobility with anyone going anywhere. These would be accomplished via closed-circuit television and telephone to a world central medical, educational, and travel-routing computer system.
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3 months 4 weeks ago
I am a dreamer of words, of written words. I think I am reading; a word stops me. I leave the page. The syllables of the word begin to move around. Stressed accents begin to invert. The word abandons its meaning like an overload which is too heavy and prevents dreaming. Then words take on other meanings as if they had the right to be young. And the words wander away, looking in the nooks and crannies of vocabulary for new company, bad company.
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Introduction, sect. 6
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Many there are, too depressed, too embruted with hard toil and the struggle for animal existence, to think for themselves. Therefore the obligation devolves with all the more force on those who can. If thinking men are few, they are for that reason all the more powerful. Let no man imagine that he has no influence. Whoever he may be, and wherever he may be placed, the man who thinks becomes a light and a power. That for every idle word men may speak they shall give an account at the day of judgment, seems a hard saying. But what more clear than that the theory of the persistence of force, which teaches us that every movement continues to act and react, must apply as well to the universe of mind as to that of matter? Whoever becomes imbued with a noble idea kindles a flame from which other torches are lit, and influences those with whom he comes in contact, be they few or many. How far that influence, thus perpetuated, may extend, it is not given to him here to see. But it may be that the Lord of the Vineyard will know.
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Ch. 21 : Conclusion
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I think the Ethics will have a permanent effect on me.
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Albert Einstein, having read Spinoza's Ethics again, wrote in a letter to Else, his cousin and later his wife (1915)
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The first Man is the first Spirit-seer; all appears to him as Spirit. What are children, but first men? The fresh gaze of the Child is richer in significance than the forecasting of the most indubitable Seer.
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3 months 4 weeks ago
Cut not fire with a sword.
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Symbol 9 | Variant translation: Poke not the fire with a sword. | As quoted in Short Sayings of Great Men: With Historical and Explanatory Notes‎ (1882) by Samuel Arthur Bent, p. 455
3 months 4 weeks ago
Everyone who enjoys thinks that the principal thing to the tree is the fruit, but in point of fact the principal thing to it is the seed.—Herein lies the difference between them that create and them that enjoy.
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3 months 4 weeks ago
The universal is the unfolding of the potential of diverse and multiple locals, acting in self-organized ways but guided by the common principles of love and reverence for life. Tolstoy wrote from his deathbed: "Understanding that welfare for human beings lies only in their unity, and that unity cannot be attained by violence. Unity can only be reached when each person, not thinking about unity, thinks only about fulfilling the laws of life. Only this supreme law of love, alike for all humans, unifies humanity."
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Vandana Shiva Earth Democracy: Justice, Sustainability, and Peace (2005)
3 months 4 weeks ago
The third class of evils comprise those which everyone causes to himself by his own action. This is the largest class, and is far more numerous than the second class. It is especially of these evils that all men complain,—only few men are found that do not sin against themselves by this kind of evil. ...This class of evil originates in man's vices, such as excessive desire for eating, drinking, and love; indulgence in these things in undue measure, or in improper manner, or partaking of bad food. This course brings diseases and afflictions upon the body and soul alike.
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Ch.12
3 months 4 weeks ago
Too busy with the crowded hour to fear to live or die.
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Quatrains, Nature
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The explicable requires the inexplicable. Experience requires the nonexperienceable. The obvious requires the mystical. This is a powerful group of paired concepts generated by the complementarity of conceptuality.
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[http://www.rwgrayprojects.com/synergetics/s05/p0000.html#501.10 501.13]
3 months 4 weeks ago
When a reasonable Soul forsaketh his divine nature, and becometh beast-like, it dieth. For though the substance of the Soul be incorruptible: yet, lacking the use of Reason, it is reputed dead; for it loseth the Intellective Life.
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3 months 4 weeks ago
Ethical control may survive in small groups, but the control of the population as a whole must be delegated to specialists—to police, priests, owners, teachers, therapists, and so on, with their specialized reinforcers and their codified contingencies.
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Beyond Freedom and Dignity (1971), p. 155
3 months 4 weeks ago
My difficulty is only an — enormous — difficulty of expression.
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Journal entry (8 March 1915) p. 40
3 months 4 weeks ago
Everything in the varying human affairs is due to chance, according to Aristotle, to the Divine Will alone according to the Ashariyah, to Divine Wisdom according to the Mu'tazilites, to the merits of man according to our opinion. It is therefore possible, according to the Ashariyah, that God inflicts pain on a good and pious man in this world, and keeps him forever in fire, which is assumed to rage in the world to come; they simply say it is the will of God. The Mu'tazilites would consider this an injustice, and therefore assume that every being, even an ant, that is stricken with pain, has compensation for it... and it is due to God's Wisdom, that a being is struck and afflicted in order to receive compensation. We, however, believe that all these human affairs are managed with justice; far be it from God to do wrong, to punish any one unless the punishment is necessary and merited. It is distinctly stated in the Law, that all is done in accordance with justice; and the words of our Sages generally express the same idea.
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Ch.17
3 months 4 weeks ago
Life is not so short but that there is always time enough for courtesy.
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Social Aims
3 months 4 weeks ago
It is the integrity of each individual human that is in final examination.
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3 months 4 weeks ago
Reason is not measured by size or height, but by principle.
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Book I, ch. 12, § 26.
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It is better to suffer, than to do, wrong.
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3 months 4 weeks ago
The subject does not belong to the world, but it is a limit of the world. (5.632)
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Original German: Das Subjekt gehört nicht zur Welt, sondern es ist eine Grenze der Welt.
3 months 4 weeks ago
The reason of a commandment, whether positive or negative, is clear, and its usefulness evident, if it directly tends to remove injustice, or to teach good conduct that furthers the well-being of society, or to impart a truth which ought to be believed either on its own merit or as being indispensable for facilitating the removal of injustice or the teaching of good morals. There is no occasion to ask for the object of such commandments; for no one can, e.g., be in doubt as to the reason why we have been commanded to believe that God is one; why we are forbidden to murder, steal, and to take vengeance, or to retaliate, or why we are commanded to love one another. But there are precepts concerning which people are in doubt, and of divided opinions, some believing they are mere commands, and serve no purpose whatever, whilst others believe that they serve a certain purpose, which, however is unknown to man. Such are those precepts which in their literal meaning do not seem to further any of the three above-named results: to impart some truth, to teach some moral, or to remove injustice. They do not seem to have any influence upon the well-being of the soul by imparting any truth, or upon the well-being of the body by suggesting such ways and rules as are useful in the government of a state, or in the management of a household. ...I will show that all these and similar laws must have some bearing upon one of the following three things, viz., the regulation of our opinions, or the improvement of our social relations, which implies two things, the removal of injustice, and the teaching of good morals.
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Ch.28
3 months 4 weeks ago
A mind does not receive truth as a chest receives jewels that are put into it, but as the stomach takes up food into the system. It is no longer food, but flesh, and is assimilated. The appetite and the power of digestion measure our right to knowledge. He has it who can use it. As soon as our accumulation overruns our invention or power to use, the evils of intellectual gluttony begin,— congestion of the brain, apoplexy, and strangulation.
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"The Natural History of Intellect", p. 30
3 months 4 weeks ago
I find people only listen to you when they ask you to talk to them.
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3 months 4 weeks ago
They call it "friendship" and "peace," and further "harmony" and "unanimity": for these are all cohesive and unificatory of opposites and dissimilars. Hence they also call it "marriage." And there are also three ages in life.
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On the Triad

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